Pluto (Review)

Crossing Wires Between Reality and Fantasy: Pluto

Know Theatre is presently staging Steve Yockey’s new play Pluto,
the second of four “rolling world premieres.” The work is not easy to
describe, to watch or to like. That’s not to say it’s not worth seeing —
but it’s challenging.

Yockey’s script crosses wires between
reality and fantasy. Annie Fitzpatrick plays anxious, high-strung
Elizabeth, and Wesley Carman is Bailey, her sullen son, struggling with
course work and relationships at a nearby community college. At a
kitchen table in a nondescript but pleasant suburban home, they have an
awkward parent-child conversation. We learn that her husband, Bailey’s
father, died strangely and unexpectedly some years earlier. She and
Bailey have grown distant, and she’s troubled by his behavior, although
she keeps insisting, “It’s a normal day, just like any other.”

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A blossoming
cherry tree hangs upside down through the fractured ceiling. Actress
Torie Wiggins sits on the floor, playing Cerberus, the three-headed dog
that guards the Gates of Hell. (She has neither three heads nor a canine
appearance; in fact, she is also a grief counselor, and Wiggins looks
more like that.) Occasionally Elizabeth’s refrigerator shakes madly, as
if possessed; it becomes a portal through which Death himself clambers
into the kitchen seeking Bailey. Actor Ken Early arrives in a deep-sea
diver suit and helmet, beneath which he sports a stylishly tailored
dress suit.

Before the madness begins, mother and son
discuss his astronomy class (which he’s failing). He tells her Pluto is
no longer a planet, but she doesn’t believe him. That’s the first of
many signs and denials as a radio delivers news flashes (sometimes
spoken directly to Elizabeth) of a horrific shooting at a local
community college. When she checks the time, it’s stuck at 9:30 a.m.,
obviously a frozen moment of horror and grief.

As the pieces begin to fall into place,
the characters, real and mythic, are vividly portrayed, steered by Jason
Bruffy’s sharp direction. I suspect Pluto won’t be to everyone’s
liking — gun violence and death are graphically portrayed, framed
variously by dark humor and poignant sentiment — but it’s a play that
creatively presents painful emotions that are both poetic and powerful.